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Council Leader Offers Compromise on Wage

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, announced a plan Friday to raise wages for some workers on subsidized projects.Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

After months of heated debate over whether New York City should mandate a so-called living wage for workers in city-subsidized projects, the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, unveiled a proposal on Friday that would raise wages for some workers in such projects.

The compromise proposal would exclude employees of commercial tenants in subsidized developments, like retail workers, who had in many ways been the main focus of the bill’s advocates.

In a news conference at City Hall, Ms. Quinn said she would introduce legislation next month that would mandate a living wage — $10 an hour with benefits, or $11.50 an hour without benefits — for employees of businesses that directly receive city subsidies, as well as for employees of on-site contractors and subcontractors in city-subsidized developments.

For example, employees of companies that provide cafeteria or mailroom services in subsidized developments would benefit because many of those workers are currently paid the state’s $7.25 hourly minimum wage.

In addition, Ms. Quinn said the Council would create a fund in its capital budget, of $3 million to $10 million, to sweeten incentives for developers who agreed to apply the living-wage requirement to tenants.

“This is a policy that is fair, one that will help workers, will not deter job growth and is one that I am honored to support,” she said.

Ms. Quinn estimated that the new bill would affect 400 to 500 workers in new developments each year, while the broader version of the legislation would have affected 600 to 700 a year. She said projects in the pipeline, including a deal being negotiated to lure the online grocer Fresh Direct to the Bronx, would be excluded from the living-wage requirement. Critics of Fresh Direct have said it pays low wages and obstructs its workers’ efforts to organize.

Ms. Quinn’s handling of the living-wage issue has been closely watched. A likely candidate for mayor in 2013, she entered public service after years as a liberal activist but recently has also courted support from the business community.

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Some business leaders, as well as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, have criticized living-wage legislation as a deterrent to economic development and job creation, while labor and liberal organizations have supported it as a way of improving the economic situation of low-wage workers.

Ms. Quinn, speaking alongside labor and business leaders and a dozen Council members, said Friday that she had concluded that she could not support the legislation already pending, which would have raised wages for all workers in subsidized developments, including employees of commercial tenants in those developments. Real estate officials had said that such a requirement would make affected developments impossible to lease.

At the news conference, Ms. Quinn was praised by advocates of the original bill — including Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, and Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president — as well as Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a network of business leaders.

It was unclear, however, whether Mr. Bloomberg, who said this week that he would support raising the state’s minimum wage, would support the more limited living-wage bill.

Julie Wood, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said, “While we appreciate the positive changes Speaker Quinn has made to this legislation, we continue to have serious concerns about the impact it could have on reducing the number of jobs in New York City.”

The living-wage compromise was the second time in a week that advocates for low-wage workers had decided to bow to political necessity.

Earlier, Mr. Diaz and Mr. Bloomberg agreed to revive efforts to redevelop the long-vacant Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, two years after a previous development deal collapsed in the face of opposition from Mr. Diaz and the retail workers’ union. The opponents had demanded that workers at the development be paid a living wage.

The new request for proposals for the armory, like the earlier one, includes a preference for developments that create living-wage jobs, but not a requirement.

A version of this article appears in print on January 14, 2012, on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Council Speaker Unveils Compromise on Wage Bill. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe